A polar bear and an orca come to a floating city…

Blackfish City
by Sam J. Miller

“A mysterious woman arrives in the floating Arctic city of Qaanaaq, in a future where rising seas have caused dramatic geopolitical changes. She’s accompanied by an orca and a polar bear, on a mission that might be bloody and might be beautiful and might be both.“

Published in 2018, Locus and Nebula Award finalist. The first half is not fast and there is a lot of set-up, but it‘s quite atmospheric. Neuromancer meets The Golden Compass.

There are a several central characters. Fill, who is diagnosed with a deadly illness that is sweeping society from marginalized fringes into mainstream society, reminiscent of HIV. Ankit, who swapped her life as a scaler/parkour athlete for the safety of working as a drone for the local administration. Kaev, a professional fighter with unspecified brain damage, who is nearing the end of his career. Soq, a messenger, young, poor, beyond gender, running errands for the local crime syndicate.
Their chapters are interspersed with essays/reports from the „City without a Map“, a sort of underground voice explaining the workings of the floating city they all live on.

I saw people in other reviews complaining about the four POVs, preferring it to be only one or that the author didn‘t pull it off. I am not a massive fan of tales with many POVs, but I liked this. It gave a great overview of the various societies and sub-cultures existing on the city. It made the beginning a slow journey, but when the different POVs come together, it is fun to realize who they all are to each other. And that really was the beauty of the story.

The idea of nanobonding to an animal is a fascinating one. It opens up so many story telling possibilities.

The world they all live in is pretty gruesome. But I guess if or when the apocalypse hits us, this could very well be how we will behave. Genocide, fanatics, power hungry warlords, petty politics and the super rich getting away and setting up their own enclave, eventually getting invaded by refugees clinging to the less prosperous arms of the city; a multi-layered mess of the have and have-not‘s.

The final climax is pretty entertaining, tense and bloody. Anything more would give too much away. I smiled a happy smile. 4 polar bears.

The first story set in this world: Calved, originally published in Asimov’s, September 2015, 5400 words.

Author‘s website: https://samjmiller.com

Podcast interview with the author about this book: https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/3… — haven‘t listened to it yet, so I can’t say how spoilerish it is. Beware.

Reed Warblers, polar bears and an orca.

Call of the Reed Warbler
by Charles Massy

This is my current audio. I thought it‘s about time that I read another non-fiction. This one here popped up when I was researching some details about regenerative farming for my job. It sounds like a good grounding on the topic. I‘m about three hours into the audio and already learned a surprising amount of things about Australia. Well, considering how little I really know about Australia, maybe not so surprising after all.

Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our planet. This ground-breaking book will change the way we think of, farm and grow food. Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is a story of how a grassroots revolution – a true underground insurgency – can save the planet, help turn climate change around, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food. 

And my current eye reading is a SF novel that was nominated for a bunch of awards.

Blackfish City
by Sam J. Miller

After the climate wars, a floating city was constructed in the Arctic Circle. Once a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering it is now rife with corruption and the population simmers with unrest. 

Into this turmoil comes a strange new visitor – a woman accompanied by an orca and a chained polar bear. She disappears into the crowds looking for someone she lost thirty years ago, followed by whispers of a vanished people who could bond with animals. Her arrival draws together four people and sparks a chain of events that will change Blackfish City forever.

This one is slow going, the first third is pretty much set up for the different POVs. I am now past the first 100 pages and the separate POVs start to make connections and the plot starts to come together. It’s quite atmospheric. Neuromancer meets Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? meets The Golden Compass.

The end of the world was Houston, Texas.

Another blast from the past, read in 2017. Here is my review from back then…

The Passage
by Justin Cronin

Goodness me, I finally finished, with a heavy dose of skimming. I liked the story, but the execution of it was not my thing. Too long, too much introspection, too much mysticism, vampires not scary enough. As a horror novel this fell flat. As a post-apocalyptic story it wasn’t bad, but I would have liked more of the in-between, not only before and after. I think that might actually happen in the next book(s), but I definitely don’t want to skim through another 800 pages and be bored for wide stretches of reading.

The first part of the book had decent world buidling, well-developed characters, I liked the changing POVs and the writing style appealed to me. The plot could have unfolded a bit faster, the build-up was glacially slow.

Almost 200 pages in the fun finally started…

The floor was slick with blood, so much blood that he felt his feet sliding on it, the grease of human remains.

Roughly 30% into the book the plot jumped about 100 years ahead into the post-apocalyptic future with its newly developed society, completely removed from the present day world. It was like reading a different book. I wouldn’t have minded staying in the present some more, to read about the collapse of society and to find out more about the characters of that timeline.

It took me a few pages to come to like this new setting, but it got interesting eventually.

Tonight’s forecast? Darkness, with widespread screaming.

Unfortunately, despite there being some very good bits in this later plot, I was pretty bored at the halfway point. Too slow, not enough tension for me. Even during attacks of the virals and supposedly very tense situations, I was just like “Oh, ok then… next…”

Nonetheless, I skimmed my way through another 100 pages or so and some quite good plot developments. And lots of looooong and boring bits in between. I considered DNFing the book, but then stuck with it, wanting to know what came next.

I think I would have been fine with a couple of hundred pages less in the center of the book. The first 30% of the book and the last 40% of it were good. I didn’t care much for the rest in between. And, as mentioned, I didn’t much like the mysticism and religious undertones. 

Sorry, only 2 not very creepy stars…

---

Reading progress:

March 6, 2017 –  2.0% “Ugh, I can’t believe I picked another book this long… Curse you, TBR pile!”

March 7, 2017 – page 36 – 4.38% “‘Like Smokey Bear says, take only pictures, leave only footprints.’“

March 10, 2017 – page 93 – 11.33% “Sister Claire often went to the 6:00 a.m. before her daily jog, which she referred to as a visit to ‘Our Lady of Endorphins.’ “

March 12, 2017 – page 154 – 18.76% ““They were in danger, terrible danger. Something was coming. She didn’t know what. Some dark force had come loose in the world, and it was sweeping toward them, coming for them all.”
I wish it would hurry up a little!”

March 12, 2017 – page 196 – 23.87% “The floor was slick with blood, so much blood that he felt his feet sliding on it, the grease of human remains.
Here we are! Glacially slow build-up is done.”

March 15, 2017 – page 276 – 33.62% “I am in chapter 20. Did a massive time jump ahead to the post-apocalyptic future. Odd, it’s like reading a different book.”

March 18, 2017 – page 307 – 37.39% “Tonight’s forecast? Darkness, with widespread screaming.“

March 18, 2017 – page 326 – 39.71% “Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody’s business but yours.“

March 23, 2017 – page 401 – 48.84% “I am bored! The second, later plotline is not bad, parts of it are good. But it’s slow, it doesn’t have enough tension for me. I could happily put this down and not pick it up again.”

March 26, 2017 – page 519 – 63.22% “All those years, waiting for the Army, and it turns out the Army is us.
And all those pages, waiting for somethings to happen. I did some hefty skimming over the last 100+ pages and , amazingly enough, have not DNFd this yet. But I am still not sure, if I can be bothered to finish. The current bit feels a bit like The Walking Dead.”

March 29, 2017 – Finished Reading

Top Ten Tuesday — most anticipated books releasing in 2023

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week‘s topic: top ten most anticipated books releasing in the first half of 2023

Another meme that I haven‘t done in a really long time. And I doubt that I will get together ten books. I don‘t check and plan ahead a lot for my reading. It‘s more of an accidental affair. So, anyway, let‘s see what I have planned already in terms of new books for this year…

I do not actually have anything newly published on my list until late April. So the title of this Top Ten Tuesday is right out of the window. Anyway, April!

In the Lives of Puppets
by T.J. Klune

This one is a maybe, I have plenty of other books on my T.J. Klune backlog.

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. 

Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.

Next one. I am not even sure this here will be published in May, as I can‘t find any dates about it anywhere besides its Goodreads bookpage:

Moon of the Turning Leaves (Moon of the … #2)
by Waubgeshig Rice

Twelve years have passed since a widespread blackout triggered the rapid collapse of society, when the constants of the old world—cell service, landlines, satellite and internet—disappeared. Twelve long years since the steady supply of food and fuel from the south became a thing of the past.

The sudden end of the world as everybody knew it, and the horrors of that first winter since everything became dark, only steeled the resolve of Evan Whitesky and the other members of the Anishinaabe community to survive on their own terms. Because the world wasn’t ending, as the community elders reminded them. It had already ended with the original displacement of their people to the far north by colonial authorities. They have seen this “apocalypse” before. They’ve seen it—lived it—over and over. But they had always survived. And they will survive this too.

http://www.bukowskiagency.com/Rice/Moon-of-the-Turning-Leaves.htm

The book was supposed to come out last year. Maybe Corona threw a wrench into the works? On Rice‘s Twitter he posts about a Fall 2022 draft, so work is still going on, fingers crossed. Sequel to MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW. My review of that book wasn‘t too favourable, when I read it in 2019. But the story has lingered, so it can‘t have been that average.

And another one for May:

Lords of Uncreation (The Final Architecture, #3)
by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us the third and final novel in an extraordinary space opera trilogy about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man’s discovery will save or destroy us all.

Loved the first one, struggled with the second one, have to read the third one to get closure.

The final book to come out in May, not sure yet if I will get it. Barring another Murderbot, I can settle:

Witch King
by Martha Wells

“I didn’t know you were a… demon.”
“You idiot. I’m the demon.”
Kai’s having a long day in Martha Wells’ WITCH KING….

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

Doesn‘t sounds all that different to dear old Murderbot, right?

And we finally move into June. ANOTHER IMPERIAL RADCH!!! Boy, did I wait long for this one! I got so fed up with waiting, I re-read the first Imperial Radch trilogy in 2021. Tea did not help with the waiting, dear!

Translation State (Imperial Radch)
by Ann Leckie

The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful new novel by award-winning author Ann Leckie. 

Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn’t “optimal behavior”. It‘s the type of behavior that results in elimination. 

Squeee! Presger translator! So looking forward to this one!

At some point in 2023 there should be Mercy Thompson #14 by Patricia Briggs. That‘s all I know. No title or cover art yet. But I will definitely read it, when it comes out.

That was only six books, sorry! We‘ll see what other books will sneak up on me in the next few months! And then back to my owned pile of TBRs….

Dying Earth, part III

Dying Earths: Sixteen Stories from the Ends of Times
by Sue Burke and others…

Finished on New Year‘s Day! And I actually backdated the finishing date to the 31st of December, so I can start the new year with a clean cut. It might throw off my statistics a little — I already wrote my yearly wrap-up, it will go online on Friday or thereabouts. But I am not fussed enough to update that post. Or rather, I am working on letting go of my OCD. It makes me a little twitchy, but I‘ll cope… 😆

Ok, back to the last few stories of this anthology:

TELLTALE by Matthew Hughes ★★★☆☆ Fantasy
“Raffalon’s world had become monochrome: the thief stood on a shingle beach of gray stones, lapped by a gray sea beneath a gray sky.“
The author likes to use plenty of adjectives. Add to that a stilted prose, presumably to give a „fantasy“ feel. Ugh. The writing became more fluent after the first paragraphs. The story had the feel of a fairytale and had absolutely nothing to do with a dyeing Earth. It was ok.

THE MEAT PLAINS by Jeremy Megargee ★★½☆☆ SF
“Humans are a mass now, a great hideous stretch of fleshy plains spanning from one end of the globe to the other.“
Ugh, this was absurd and really disgusting. 

THE MIDWIVES by Jude Reid ★★★½☆ SF
Earth dies, some chose ones leave. This is the story of the descendants of those left behind.

THE SNOWS OF ADALON by Scott J. Couturier ★★★☆☆ Fantasy/SF
“Clouded over by perpetual white-gray miasma, wroth with terminal frost and cold, the planet is muffled in a cloak of blizzards.“
A blend of Fantasy and SF, with a sorcerer and his daughter stuck on a planet that was plunged into eternal winter. Salvation might be an escape capsule and the planet‘s moon.

ALONE IN IMALONE by Christopher Stanley ★★★★☆ Apocalyptic
Amusing little story about a guy trying to get onto one of the shuttles leaving Earth, before it blows up. 

CONVERTIR Andrew by Leon Hudson ★★★★★ Fantasy?
“When even something so evident as the changing of the climate becomes a matter of faith, to be accepted or rejected at the whim of the individual… in what sense is there a settled material reality at all?”
We start at the compound of a religious cult, but end up debating the perception of reality, fake news and the willful ignorance of facts that seems to be so abundant right now. Pretty wacky, but good.

This last story led me to an online SF magazine: https://mythaxis.co.uk

What I liked about this anthology:
It reminded me that I like Sue Burke. She is probably the main reason why I got this a while back. I met some new authors.

What I did not like about this anthology:
Considering the name of this anthology, I expected stories of the apocalypse. Dyeing Earth. Right? In quite a few of these stories the presence of Earth was incidental and we could have been anywhere. And even the apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic setting seemed to be more of an afterthought or something in the sidelines. It was not a focal point. The title also incorporated „Ends of Time“, but it still feels a little like the book topic was missed. Still, mostly enjoyable.

Link to the review of the first set of stories.

Link to the second set of story reviews.

Dying Earth, part II

Dying Earths: Sixteen Stories from the Ends of Times
by Sue Burke and others…

Ongoing. I will update as I go along…

WAITING FOR THE RAIN by Shana Scott ★★½☆☆ Dystopia? Hard to tell. There was no magic or any SF elements.
“The summer was beating them down: plants burned before they grew, scavengers poisoned by the rotted carrion, water scarce—coveted.“
Possibly set in Africa somewhere, hard to tell. Drought, suffering, a sacrifice is needed to appease the Sun. I didn‘t like the writing much.

PURPLE NASTIES by Jez Patterson ★★¾☆☆ Dystopia / SF
“The Sun isn’t really purple either. It’s just a big ball of white light. Only, now it’s got this cloud of purple gas around it.“
Very short, very odd. Some cosmic event led to a chemical reaction that led to purple gas around the sun and purple light on Earth, with disastrous results.

TO CLIMB BY THE LIGHT OF THE SPUTTERING SUN by Daniel Ausema ★★★★★ Dystopia / SF
A team of scavengers for hire venture outside of the city to find valuables. The city is under a dome in the shape of a skull, made from bone? The sun is old and dyeing, the seas are acidic. Our crew has a steep and dangerous climb to make.
The writing of this one hit my sweet spot, I really liked it. I never figured out the skulls. Robots or machines, partially made of bone? 

LEGACY 2.0 by N. E. White ★★★★¾ SF
Maria and Juan circle a dead Earth, millenia after humanity has abandoned it. They have a cockroach situation aboard their spaceship. Good one!

DRIED SMOKE by Kat Pekin ★★★★★ Post-Apocalypse
“First to get hit were the capitals, so Brisbane was much fucked from day one.“
Australia after a nuclear attack. Siblings are driving away from the cities, trying to stay alive… Well written, good action scenes, I liked the characters.

Link to the review of the first set of stories.

Apocalypse, horror, adventure and vampires

Impact Winter
by Travis Beacham

Earth was hit by a comet and the world went dark. In the darkness, vampires rose. This story is about a group of human survivors, battling to stay alive.

“A story of apocalypse, horror, and adventure, Impact Winter is a wholly original new saga created just for Audible with immersive 3D audio (featuring a brilliant British cast) that dares you to pop in your earbuds and listen in the dark. Venture into an eternally sunless world of swords and crossbows; primal hunters and shape-shifters; leaders and lovers. Hear how a brave few fight to survive the impact winter.“

Entertaining, a little creepy and too short to really explore this world to its fullest. Nothing Earth-shattering, but I liked the characters and the story in general. Good, if you are looking for a shorter audio, that isn‘t too taxing. The cast did a good job.

Millennial banality with zombies

Severance
by Ling Ma (Author), Nancy Wu (Narrator)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

“The end begins before you are ever aware of it.“

Odd book. The beginning feels like Covid-19 reimagined, bacterial instead of viral. Or rather it’s prophetic, as it was written in 2018. Apocalyptic/dystopian on the surface, it reads more like literary fiction. Commentary on capitalism, consumerism, the life of millennials, hopes and aspirations and the reality of making ends meet, the occasional boredom and banality of everyday life and work.

A long look back at the depressing/monotonous life of the MC. Average millenial with average job, living an average-sounding life of the relatively well-off. Illness strikes, an outbreak at first and then a pandemic. People seem to wind up as harmless zombies, wandering about and repeating tasks of their living past. Society as we know it ends. Our MC eventually leaves New York and joins up with a group of other survivors.

The backstories of the MC and her parents, Chinese immigrants to the US, take centre stage for most of the book. Which made me question if the apocalyptic setting was just a gimmick, to draw more readers. There is an odd amount of narrative about the MCs book production job. This had me wondering even more, what the whole point of this book was supposed to be. The dystopian elements only play a small part.

One of my GR friends described this as a „a slightly disguised New Adult Contemporary coming of age“. It’s a bit deeper than that, but nails it pretty well.

The audiobook narrator sounded pretty bored and laconic for most of the book. Or depressed? Pretty similar to how the MC felt about her life before the apocalypse.

The last few chapters made up for the indifference I mostly felt towards this story. The ending is pretty open, which I usually hate, but it gave a nice sense of purpose and possibility here.

Getting ready for war

March to War (The Walking Dead, #20)
by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard (Illustrations), Cliff Rathburn (Illustrator)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Another one in the endless comic series of The Walking Dead. Getting ready for that ultimate confrontation with Negan. 

At the Hilltop. Maggie is dealing with something not to be mentioned to avoid spoilers… Rick is rallying the troupes against Negan, with varied results. People are tired and want to live in peace. Jesus helps. Aaand… that‘s not going so well. Almost.

In the meantime the classic supply run is happening… ?

There is more of the Kingdom as well. Oh oh, measuring the length of… whatever. Michonne wins…

This one probably reached new heights of profanity. So many shit and fuck and variations thereof on one page, page after page. Must be a new record.

Rick has to really become the leader they all need….

Because Negan is going to war…

“This volume collects THE WALKING DEAD #109-114, the prelude to ALL OUT WAR—the epic battle that will change the world of THE WALKING DEAD for years to come.“

From the blurb

Fleeing into the woods

The Marrow Thieves
by Cherie Dimaline

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A dystopian world. Climate change, melting ice caps, floods, torrential rains, no electrical power left, no running water, polluted rivers and lakes, collapse of society, the whole nine yards. And that is just what happens before the beginning of the book. Most people have lost the ability to dream.

“The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world.“

French has lost his family, but finds a new one. They flee the cities and treck north through the woods, hoping to find a safe place.

That‘s pretty much it for the first half of the book. Running, hunting, minimal plot. Plus a little backstory in the shape a few origin stories of some of the members of the group. More backstory would have been nice. Slow build-up and glacial pace after the initial intro to the story and world.

This had—at least in parts—the feel of magical realism, without the magic, if that makes sense. The grimness of the schools and the marrow thieves was mostly in the off, hinted at and not really explored. This was more about the relationships of those that survived and their decisions how to live and where to go from there. If the characters and their budding relationship are the point of the story though, more character development would have been nice.

So, whilst the idea of this story was a good one, it wasn‘t really my cup of tea.

Content warning: several fairly foggy mentions of rape, one not so foggy one. Murder, genocide, medical experimentation and more.